ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Jeremy Hunt seeks charitable revolution to power Britain's creative industries

Jeremy Hunt MP, Shadow Culture Secretary, gave his first big speech on the arts yesterday evening.  He was speaking to Peter Whittle's increasingly influential New Culture Forum.  Within the audience were Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate Modern; Nicholas Hytner, Director of the National Theatre; Neil McGregor, Director of the British Museum; and Colin Tweedie of Arts and Business.

Here are some of the main points made by Mr Hunt within an impressive speech delivered without notes:

The creative industries are vital to the British economy and regeneration. They account for 3.7% of the national income and 1.9 million jobs.  No social regeneration project is complete without a strong creative sector dimension.

Labour has done many good things for the arts but the renaissance began under the Conservatives in 1994 with the establishment of the National Lottery.  He noted that the Lottery had provided £3.8bn for the arts and £4.1bn for heritage.  Labour had, he said, reduced funding for the arts by raiding the Lottery pot and taking from what was originally intended for the 'four pillars' - arts, heritage, sport, local community causes.  A Conservative Government's National Lottery Independence Bill would restore the exclusivity of Lottery funding for the four pillars and this would mean nearly £100m more each year for the arts and heritage.

More private charity. Further to ensuring that the arts received more public funding he also said that Conservatives would do more to encourage private giving to good causes.  Saluting the work of Greg Clark MP, Shadow Charities Minister and his co-author of papers on 'progressive conservatism', he said that £3bn to £4bn extra could be made available to the arts and other good causes if giving rose to 1% as a percentage of UK national income, from its current level of 0.7%.  This shouldn't be impossible given the huge wealth in the City, for example.  In the US philanthropy is at 1.7%.  He discussed streamlining gift aid, using the honours system for recognising major philanthropists and encouraging endowments but most important were new social norms.  Giving to charity must become as normal as leaving a tip of 10% at a restaurant, he said.  Both Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt have been strongly influenced by Daniel Finkelstein's thinking on the importance of social behaviours.

Less bureaucracy.  Jeremy Hunt promised to look at the bureaucracy that had meant the Arts Council spent 12p of every pound it donates on administration.  It was just 5p.  Action against this sort of bureaucracy and the red tape that government imposes on the arts sector in more direct ways could free significant resources.

No ifs, no buts, free museums were here to stay.  Following last year's controversy which saw the sacking of his predecessor Hugo Swire, Jeremy Hunt affirmed that free museum access would be protected by a Conservative government.  Noting that admissions had increased by 80% he applauded then Culture Secretary Chris Smith's victory over then Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

Mr Hunt said that the arts shouldn't be seen in purely 'instrumental' terms by politicians but also in 'inspirational' terms.  Quoting Alain de Botton he said that the arts helped us thrive, not just survive.

PS There's a really silly story in The Sun this morning that suggests Jeremy Hunt endorsed graffiti.  He did nothing of the sort.  He merely noted how one piece of graffiti on the M40 - Why do I do this every day? - was an example of how the arts can often challenge us.

David Davis on Today

Did you hear David Davis on the Today programme, 8.10am?  In a ten minute interview about 90% was spent on the "process story" of his resignation and what it meant for his political future/ the Conservative Party.  There was almost no discussion of the issues upon which David Davis has resigned.  That's what is wrong with political coverage today.

Over the next few weeks let's hope that that can be put right and David Davis gets the chance to put his case on 42 days, CCTV, DNA databases etc.

11.15am: David Davis has just done half an hour with Five Live, he described 42 days as "frankly evil" and also said that his good friend Dominic Grieve would be a better Home Secretary than him anyway. Afterwards R5 played clip of David Cameron talking about the need for the Shadow Cabinet to be "permanent", at its "very strongest"... and also that it is "a team, and will play as a team."

BBC banned Tory Blackberrys on election night

... because the slick CCHQ machine was getting results to Conservative spokesmen before the BBC had them! The Guardian's Backbencher reports:

"The BBC never likes to be reminded that it breaks news as if it's a quarterly periodical rather than a 24-7 outlet, and because of this it rather churlishly did its best to upset the smooth running of the Thursday night Tory results machine. Allegedly. If you've watched the videos on Webcameron, you'll have seen Cameron et al waiting and then celebrating as the results came in (you haven't? Gosh. It's what West Wing would have looked like if George III hadn't lost America and Aaron Sorkin had been a Brit).

Well, off camera there wasn't much champagne action. Instead there were number crunchers and phone bashers extracting results from counts around the country and endeavouring to get them out to their front men sitting in television studios around London - ahead of the rest - to be able to put their gloss on it first. Impressive. Until the BBC made all politicians turn off their BlackBerrys. BBC sources said it was because of electronic interference ... Tory sources said it was because they were scooping them. Instead a Tory aide would receive an email, trot a print out of said results on to the set and hand it to their Tory. Even allowing for time wasted in the printing out and trotting in of results, you may remember that George Osborne still managed to broadcast some results on air before Dimbleby did."

As soon as results came in to Sheridan Westlake and co at CCHQ, they were innovatively syndicated via Twitter so mobile alerts and the front page of Conservatives.com were often beating the BBC and Sky.

Tory consultation paper proposes ending the BBC monopoly

The Mail on Sunday reports this morning that the BBC is angry at draft Tory proposals from Jeremy Hunt MP to 'top-slice' the licence fee and allow other broadcasters to share the revenues.

The proposal first became public knowledge just before Christmas and has won the approval of the Tory grassroots.  The graphic opposite shows that 61% of Conservative members supported it although many hoped for a still bolder policy.  Only 20% wanted the BBC to continue to enjoy a monopoly of licence fee revenues.  11% opposed the policy for being too cautious.

We can also reveal that the idea has won the ConservativeHome Award for Policy Innovation of the Year.   More than 8,000 people voted in December and January and chose this policy above  the idea for co-operative schools and Peter Lilley's advocacy of 'real trade' policies that would benefit poorer nations.

Other ideas in the Tory draft paper on the future of broadcasting include:

• Replacement of the BBC Trust with a new Public Service Broadcasting Commission that will oversee distribution of the licence fee.
• Deregulation of restrictions on the global commercial activities of BBC and Channel 4.
• Protections for new media start-up companies from unfair competition from large, established broadcasters.

Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum has written for ConservativeHome about the kind of alternative public service broadcaster he would like to see.  He summed it up as Less Woman's Hour, More Moral Maze.

Culture Warrior: Jeremy Clarkson & Top Gear

Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team have won the Culture Warrior vote for "defying the BBC monoculture". This is what Michael Gove had to say about Top Gear a few months ago:

"Over the years, something amazing happened. Not only did Top Gear become addictive viewing, it did so by doing something I don’t think any BBC programme (apart from possibly The Moral Maze) has ever done: by moving to the Right.

Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, the programme has become a celebration of individual freedom, capitalist excess and private-sector innovation. It is also laced with laddish distrust of political correctness, nannying and Ken Livingstone-style finger-wagging. Some viewers might find its sensibility just a bit too juvenile, even public-schoolish, with the presenters mobbing each other up and addressing each other by their surnames. But I find it totally absorbing."

The other shortlisted nominees were Peter Whittle for establishing the New Culture Forum and presenting Culture Clash, and Douglas Murray for leadership of the new Centre for Social Cohesion.

* More than 8000 people voted on the 2008 ConservativeHome Movement Awards. The previous award announced was One To Watch, which went to James Forsyth.

Good causes would gain nearly £200m every year from Tory changes to National Lottery

As reported in today's Daily Mail, the Conservatives wish to reform the National Lottery so that it returns to its original purpose of only funding good, voluntary causes.  During the Labour years £3.8bn has been taken away from good causes to fund politicians' pet projects.

David Cameron and Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will promise a National Lottery Independence Bill that will end political inteference in the Lottery.  Three measures should ensure that nearly £200m extra every year will find its way to good causes:

• An end to funding politically-determined projects.  £100m is currently denied to good causes every year.
• 15% of lottery good cause money is currently assumed by the administration costs of the distributors. A new cap on these costs would release up to £36m for good causes.
• New tax treatments would produce another £40m or so for good causes without affecting Treasury revenues.

Conservatives must encourage more media diversity

There are two draft 'media policy' ideas that ConservativeHome would like to see fully embraced by the Tory leadership in 2008.

One was released just before Christmas by Jeremy Hunt MP, our Culture spokesman.  It's an idea that will take a modest portion of the licence fee (perhaps 2%) - currently monopolised by the BBC - and distribute it to another broadcaster, or other broadcasters, so that they can also offer 'public service broadcasting'.  Our hope is that the 2% would go to form an alternative to Radio 4:

"What we need, as former BBC journalist Robin Aitken has proposed, is a new licence fee funded broadcaster that is based on the British system of getting to the truth' via having opposing arguments test one another.  Our judicial system (defence and prosecution) and parliamentary system (opposition and government) is based on this adversarial principle.  At the moment, the BBC is largely based on the French inquisitorial system whereby an expert searches for truth.  The trouble is that the BBC expert is up to eleven times as likely to be liberal as conservative."

Next week Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum will be writing a Platform piece for ConservativeHome that will describe what this alternative broadcaster might look like.  It would not be a conservative station but a station that ensured those groups (those licence feepayers) currently under-represented by the BBC would get more of a chance to be involved in programme-making.

The second idea was one that won overwhelming approval from ConservativeHome readers when it was part of our 100policies process (a process that we will revive later this year).  'Aristeides' explained his policy idea at the time:

"All government and local authority jobs will only be advertised on a single government-run website. Operationally, it will be on a low cost almost blog-style platform, searchable by indexing (google-type) software. No one who is looking to work in the civil service should not be able to use the internet. All job centres would obviously also have readily available access to the site over the internet. Departments, councils and quangos would then use the site rather than advertising in the press. With the benefit of technology, jobs can easily be sorted by area, skill or salary."   

We understand from George Osborne's office that the idea remains under active consideration.  We can see no good reason why it does not become party policy.  It would save the taxpayer a considerable sum of money and it would end a huge subsidy to a newspaper with a strong left-liberal bias.  Why should conservative taxpayers be paying for Guardian journalism?

The first Agenda2008 item was published earlier this week: It's time for fairer seats.

Throughout 2008 we'll provide monthly updates on the progress of our 2008 campaigns.

Why should the BBC have a monopoly on the licence fee?

There's a story in tomorrow's Times that is genuinely exciting.  The Times' Sam Coates reports this:

"Mr Cameron’s culture team has begun a policy review into public service broadcasting which is looking at ways to ensure Britain will have a “plurality of public service broadcasters” in the digital era. It will report early next year...  Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, told The Times that in future the BBC might not be the sole recipient of the licence fee. “That’s one option because we want to make sure we aren’t exclusively dependent on the BBC for high quality television.  “We want choice for consumers, and the BBC is not the only silo of good quality television.”"

Absolutely.  It appears that Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is pursuing the issue I raised with him earlier this year (see second answer in this Q&A).

There are two things here that are often conflated:

1. The TV licence fee - the poll tax on every TV-watching UK household that provides a means for high quality broadcasting to be produced.
2. The BBC - the organisation that currently consumes all of the licence fee.  The same organisation that ConservativeHome believes is institutionally biased in a number of ways.

The Tories wouldn't be politically sensible to recommend that a large proportion of the licence fee is taken away from the BBC but the Corporation would find it much harder to argue that a small proportion (say 2%) shouldn't be allocated to new public service programming - either on other channels or, ConservativeHome's preference, to fund a new public service broadcaster that is based on a different approach to news impartiality.

What we need, as former BBC journalist Robin Aitken has proposed, is a new licence fee funded broadcaster that is based on the British system of getting to the truth' via having opposing arguments test one another.  Our judicial system (defence and prosecution) and parliamentary system (opposition and government) is based on this adversarial principle.  At the moment, the BBC is largely based on the French inquisitorial system whereby an expert searches for truth.  The trouble is that the BBC expert is up to eleven times as likely to be liberal as conservative.  That's why, in the last 24 hours, the BBC's coverage of the Bali summit has been disgraceful.  There has been next to no attempt to give fair coverage to the Washington perspective.  The Europeans have been presented as the good guys in wanting to address the issue (even though they're better at signing treaties than meeting their obligations under them) and the Americans are the bad guys (although Washington is investing hugely in clean technologies).

10% of the current licence fee funds the BBC's ten national radio stations.  There's surely room for one-fifth of that money to go to a new current affairs radio station that is based on this adversarial approach to truth seeking?  If you want to think of what it would look like, I'd point to the BBC's excellent Moral Maze as an example of what could be imaginatively replicated.

Who has just written this?

"You know my trouble? I'm just too generous to the government."

"Forgive me being a little slow but I've only just properly clocked yesterday's revelation that 11,000 illegal immigrants had been permitted to become security guards. Why am I telling you about it now then? Because it's dawned on me just how different these numbers are to what the Home Office claimed they'd be."

Keep reading...

"Weeks ago, when this problem was first announced, I listened hard to the Home Office briefings, I tried hard to treat the news calmly and I calculated hard what the figures might be. On the basis of this guidance - I wrote that "based on the outcome of checks made so far the worst case scenario could be over 8,000... Ministers insist that it is impossible to be more precise than they have been so far since they will only have accurate figures once checks are complete in December and say that 5,000 is still the best estimate at the moment".

Perhaps next time I should not listen to the official guidance and think of a number and then double it!"

The author who is now less willing to listen to the official guidance is...

Nick Robinson, the BBC's Political Editor and probably one of the most important people for a politician to keep sweet.  Any politician with any sense, that is.

Mr Brown doesn't appear to have that basic sense, however.  It's not the first time that he's poked Mr Robinson in the eye.  Remember this?

On the day that the EU Treaty is signed, four out of five Question Time panellists are Europhiles

The EU's leaders signed the Treaty earlier today and the BBC could have predicted that it would be a topic of some interest for tonight's Question Time.

And guess who they put on the panel?

Four Europhiles...

Piers Morgan, Charles Kennedy, Hazel Blears and Chris Patten.

Kirstie Allsop was the only Eurosceptic.

This failure by our publicly-funded broadcaster is typical.  Although the Corporation is often careful to gravitate towards party political neutrality it gets the more fundamental biases wrong.  It's quite usual on QT and Radio 4's Any Questions to hear all of the panellists agree on topics.  There is often 75%/80% opposition to the Iraq war, for example.  There has often been consensus on 'moral issues' like abortion and euthanasia.

When the BBC thinks of diversity it thinks of colour and diversity.  Real diversity should include breadth of perspective.

I'm grateful to Simon Richards of The Freedom Association for drawing my attention to tonight's biased panel.

Adam Boulton: "One does begin to wonder if Gordon Brown is cut out for the top job. He does not have a great deal of natural charisma and at times seems a little, well, plodding."

I can't disagree with Mr Boulton but I'm surprised to read Sky's Political Editor writing it openly.

Mr Brown certainly lost friends in Sky, ITN and the bulk of BBC Westminster when he gave Mr Marr the non-election exclusive.

There are eleven times more 'liberals' at the BBC than 'conservatives'

One of the great things about Facebook is that you can find the nichest of niche groups of like-minded people. It has an advertising package to match. You can, for example, upload an ad banner that will appear 10,000 times to female twenty-somethings who live in York and enjoy listening to jazz. This kind of micro-targeting has got to be the next stage of the Party's online advertising campaign. The advertising package has other uses...

BBC employees went Facebook mad earlier this year with 10,580 now having profiles on the social networking site. Many of them chose to specify their political views as either liberal, moderate or conservative (there isn't a socialist option available to the chagrin of many). An advanced search reveals that more than 11 times the number of BBC employees on Facebook list themselves as liberal than conservative:

BBC - 10,580
BBC liberals - 1,340
BBC moderates - 340
BBC conservatives - 120

Former BBC journalist Robin Aitken, who has still yet to be properly interviewed by any of his many former colleagues about his whistle-blowing on its institutional biases, said you couldn't make a cricket team out of the number of Tories at the corporation. He wasn't far wrong!

To show that these proportions don't merely reflect the fact that the student-dominated Facebook is full of young liberal trendies anyway, a search of the UK-wide Facebook population reveals a liberal to conservative ratio of just 2.5 to 1, that's four times less liberal than those on the BBC network:

UK -  6,407,580
UK liberals - 545,240
UK moderates - 251,320              
UK conservatives - 216,660

Narrowing it down to the London network where most BBC employees reside, the ratio is still just nigh of 3 to 1 at 147,340 to 51,760.

Although 10,480 BBC employees is as big a sample as you're ever going to get in a survey, this isn't a definitive analysis. Facebook is more likely to attract younger employees and many of them wouldn't be comfortable publicly listing themselves as conservatives (they have their careers to think about!). It is, however, a pretty good guide to the political perspectives of those who work for our monolithic national broadcaster, and a worrying one at that.

p.s. We recently created a second Facebook group for ConservativeHome readers, when we reached a thousand members of the first one we lost the ability to mass-message them.

p.p.s. Hat-tip to Stephen Taylor's must-read blog on the Conservative Party of Canada, for the inspiration for this story

12pm update: There are tonnes of stats out there waiting to be found, go to the Flyers Pro section of the Advertising section of Facebook to find out the proportion of conservatives in your university or city. Other observations from me...

• The Lib-Con ratio is fairly even throughout the demographics of BBC employees, with men having a very slightly better ratio than women and over thirties slightly better than twenty-somethings.
• It's difficult to find other organisations that have a large enough sample as most people don't choose to declare their political views on their profile, but another one is the UK Civil Service network which has 5.6 liberals to each conservative.
• You can search for any keyword that is in the sections of people's profiles that describe what they are interested in, Open Europe's Neil O'Brien for example got a search result that said "there are less than 20 people in UK who like euro"

Deputy Editor

The Conservatives must intensify pressure on BBC to reform

Who feels sorry for the BBC and the loss of 1,700 jobs?  Guido doesn't.  He regards the job cuts as "a good start"!

A post on Platform10 calls for BBC3, BBC4 and other new services to be scrapped so that core public service broadcasting can be properly funded.

Dan Hannan thinks it's over for Auntie: "The revolution in communications technology is making the BBC, and every other nationalised television company, irrelevant. It’s over, boys. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do."

Ted Brocklebank MSP, for the Scottish Tories, is concerned at the BBC's priorities: “I do genuinely think it is ridiculous that Scottish broadcasters and other staff will lose their jobs at a time when the BBC sees fit to pay out vastly inflated sums to so-called star network presenters."  He must be thinking of Jonathan Ross et al.

Jeremy Hunt MP, Shadow Culture Secretary, also wonders if the BBC is getting its priorities right.  In a statement just issued he said:

"Mark Thompson has a gargantuan task to persuade the public that quality in core areas such as news and documentaries will not be affected by the scale of the job cuts proposed. The recent purchase of the Lonely Planet guidebooks will also raise questions about whether the BBC is really committed to doing fewer things better."

The purchase of Lonely Planet has been estimated at £100m.  This is, I guess, what Iain Dale is worried about when he warns that the BBC must stay focused on its news gathering operations.

Mr Hunt has been more robust than his predecessor in commenting on the BBC.  In a Q&A with ConservativeHome in July,  he agreed that the Corporation evidenced a "tendency to be pro-European, anti-American, anti-politician, anti-capitalism etc".  He also described Robin Aitken's suggestion that a small portion of the licence fee - 2% - be allocated to a new speech-based radio station that could offer an "adversarial" public service broadcasting alternative to the BBC as "a practical way" to tackle these biases.  It would be great to hear more from Mr Hunt on this...

The Marr exclusive was Brown's second big mistake

If allowing election fever to get out of control was mistake numero uno, giving the exclusive to Andrew Marr was Gordon Brown's second big mistake.

Sky and ITN are furious and that's reflected in their coverage.

But Mr Brown doesn't appear to have endeared himself to Nick Robinson, BBC Political Editor either.

Here are some key lines from Nick Robinson's report to Radio 4's Six'o'clock news (not verbatim - although close - unless in quotation marks):

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear", the ability to choose the timing of an election is one of the strongest weapons in a Prime Minister's armory and somehow Gordon Brown has contrived to turn the weapon upon himself - "wounding both his reputation and the morale of his party".

...Let's be clear, speculation was not the right word to describe what had happened.  The Prime Minister's key allies were sanctioned to plan for an election, to talk about it publicly and official government business was moved.  "These are facts - not mere Westminster gossip".

..."This will be a huge morale boost to the Tories" who, in truth, were putting on a brave face when they called on Mr Brown to bring it on...

"For now though it is enough to say that not since Jim Callaghan's joke about waiting at the church has a Prime Minister caused himself so much political damage so unnecessarily."

8.35pm: CWO has recorded Adam Boulton's unhappiness.

A very good article about BBC bias from John Redwood, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

The BBC is in the news again for all of the wrong reasons.  The Controller of BBC1 has fallen on his sword for his part in the Corporation's recent 'framing' of The Queen.

Yesterday I highlighted John Humphreys' ludicrously soft questioning of Bill Clinton.  He harangues Bush adminstration officials but Bill Clinton was able to spout his worldview without serious challenge.

John Redwood has an excellent post today on the very different treatment that he and Vince Cable receive from the BBC.  The BBC regularly notes that Mr Cable, LibDem Treasury spokesman, was briefly Chief Economist of Shell International.  The significant business experience of John Redwood, in contrast, is never cited although this fellow of All Souls College has also been Chairman of a large Stock Exchange listed industrial group and an executive director of a bank.

Another aspect of the differential treatment comes in the labels that get attached to Mr Redwood but not to Mr Cable.  The LibDem MP is not introduced as “left wing”, ” Euroenthusiast” or “interventionist" although Mr Redwood is often introduced as "Eurosceptic" or "right-wing".  Fair?  No.

On the eve of a General Election we all need to be on the look out for these subtle forms of bias that attempt to paint Conservatives as ideologically-biased and our opponents as more independently-minded.

Has James Purnell faked photos before?!

Jeremy Hunt MP has described the position of his opposite number - James Purnell, the Culture Secretary - as "increasingly untenable" after it was revealed that he had agreed to have his image added to a photo of a hospital opening - to which he was late.  The fake image can be viewed on the right.  Mr Hunt said that it would be difficult for Mr Purnell to hold a portfolio which has some responsibilities for addressing the crisis of confidence in the media following revelations of fake phone-in competitions on the BBC and independent TV.

The images below (thanks to the anonymous source who sent them to me) suggest that this may not have been the first time that Mr Purnell has taken part in some Photoshopping...

Another black day for the BBC

Conservatives have long worried about the BBC and this year has provided new evidence for the BBC's unreliability:

• The internal seminar revealed that the Corporation itself admitted serious biases;
• There was the BBC's staggering and arrogant refusal to grant one serious interview to Robin Aitken after the 25-years-BBC-journalist exposed Corporation bias in his authoritative book;
• Then came the internal report that confirmed the nature of institutional bias;
• Last week we had the mistreatment of Her Majesty The Queen.

Today we have substantial evidence of faked phone-ins including for the Comic Relief programme.

Our new Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP has issued an appropriately strong statement:

“This is a grim day for the BBC.  Mark Thompson has uncovered a hornet’s nest of deception at what was Britain’s most trusted broadcaster.  The most worrying thing is the impact it will have on charitable giving, as many of the fake winners were in programmes raising money for good causes.  Tough words are fine but the proof of the pudding is what actually changes.  At stake is not just standards of BBC broadcasting but also the new governance arrangements, which the BBC has assured us will be more effective than the old cosy arrangements with the BBC Governors.  The bottom line is not just can we trust the Beeb, but can we trust the Trust?”

I'm hoping for an equally robust answer from Jeremy on my recent question about BBC reform.  Hoping.  Not necessarily expecting!

Media liberalism

The Centre for Policy Studies is publishing a paper tomorrow, Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer, by Antony Jay, co-writer of Yes, Minister. Robin Aitken, a more recent employee of the BBC who has spoken out on its institutional bias with his book, has yet to be interviewed about it by the BBC. The Telegraph has a large extract of Jay's paper, highlights of which are below:

The chattering classes: "They are that minority characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form found in the Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC News and Current Affairs, who constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus - though the word “liberal” would have Adam Smith rotating at maximum velocity in his grave. Let's call it "media liberalism"."

Tonight programme: "My stint coincided almost exactly with Macmillan's premiership, and I do not think my ex-colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters. But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit,     anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it."

On the Queen Mother: "It was (and is) essentially, though not exclusively, a graduate phenomenon. From time to time it finds an issue that strikes a chord with the broad mass of the nation, but in most respects it is wildly unrepresentative of national opinion. When the Queen Mother died the media liberal press dismissed it as an event of no particular importance, and were mortified to see the vast crowds lining the route for her funeral, and the great flood of national emotion that it released."

Cameron encourages more responsibility from music industry

In a speech to the British Phonographic Industry last night, David Cameron promised action against copyright theft and to extend the copyright term to seventy years.  In return he urged the industry to be more socially responsible in its output.  He asked his audience a series of questions:

"Does music help create, rather than just reflect, a culture?

Yes.

Is some music, are some lyrics, are some videos and are some artists, helping to create a culture in which an anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny are glorified?

Yes.

Can we see the effects of this on our young people, in our schools and on our streets?

Yes.

Do we think we can combat this culture by government policies, policing and criminal justice alone?

No."

Vaizey attacks "incredible" decision of BBC to cut coverage of Blair's farwell statement to Commons

In my live blog of today's historic PMQs I wrote this: "In what has to be one of the lowest points in public service broadcasting BBC2's Daily Politics coverage stops halfway through the Prime Minister's concluding remarks to cut to Wimbledon."

Shadow Culture minister Ed Vaizey MP has just emailed me this reaction to the BBC's decision:

"I find it incredible, whatever your view of Blair, that the BBC should cut historic coverage of a unique parliamentary affair to cover a second round match at Wimbledon."

4.30pm update: Just spoken to IDS.  He was part of the Daily Politics panel when the coverage was cut.  As he walked through the BBC offices at Millbank he said that there was a furious reaction with BBC staffers protesting with strings of four letter words!  Iain himself said that it was an "appalling" decision.

If Brown doesn't privatise Channel 4, the Conservatives must

Channel 4 is currently defying calls from the Conservatives and friends of Princess Diana to axe a programme which contains reportedly graphic images of the Paris car crash that killed her nearly ten years ago.  Ed Vaizey MP, our broadcasting spokesman, told ConservativeHome: "We think Channel 4 has crossed a line by showing the inside of the car. No matter how much they protest they have been sensitive and careful, they have breached a line that has held for ten years."

The timing of this new row could embolden Gordon Brown in his reported interest in privatising Channel 4 for £1bn.  At the 2001 General Election the Conservative Party proposed the sale of C4 and that proceeds should be used to endow universities.  It is still the party's policy to end all public subsidy to the broadcaster that produced 46,000 complaints when its recent Celebrity Big Brother programme contained allegedly racist bullying.

The BBC's champagne socialists

In an unguarded moment the BBC Radio Five Live's Jane Garvey remembers how the BBC greeted Labour's 1997 victory with champagne.  Listen here.  And courtesy of Biased BBC, here is the transcript:

"Ah, well - I had been up for most of the night but I was doing this Five Live breakfast programme with our colleague at the time - it was a bloke called Peter Allen so - I had to get a bit of sleep, and I do remember I walked back into - we were broadcasting then from Broadcasting House in the centre of London - all very upmarket in those days - and the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles - I will always remember that (Allen laughs) - er - not that the BBC were celebrating in any way shape or form (Allen, laughing - 'no, no, no, not at all') - and actually - I think it's fair to say that in the intervening years the BBC, if it was ever in love with Labour has probably fallen out of love with Labour, or learned to fall back in, or basically just learned to be in the middle somewhere which is how it should be - um - but there was always this suggestion that the BBC was full of pinkoes who couldn't wait for Labour to get back into power - that may have been the case, who knows ? but as I say I think there've been a few problems along the way - wish I hadn't started this now..."

And we shouldn't take any comfort from the fact that the BBC has apparently "fallen out of love with Labour".  Any falling out reflects BBC employees' anger at the Iraq war - not a return to Reithian standards of impartiality.

Related link: The BBC refuses to answer Robin Aitken's critique

The way to the BBC's heart is through The Guardian

Where New Labour wooed the Murdoch empire, Project Cameron woos the BBC.  Project Cameron often appears careful not to take up positions that will antagonise the Corporation on its own future, climate change or the war on terror.  In his unmissable column on the press (for The Independent) Stephen Glover notes how the wooing of The Guardian is all part of the BBC-directed charm offensive:

"Mr Cameron's policy of wooing The Guardian, or at any rate not being at loggerheads with it, is central to his strategy. The Guardian may have comparatively limited sales, but it is the BBC's in-house journal.  The Cameroons are certain, after the trauma of three successive election defeats, that the Tories can never win power again with the liberal media against them. The BBC is of course infinitely more powerful than The Guardian, but that newspaper occupies roughly the same role within the corporation as Chairman Mao's Little Red Book once did amongst Chinese Communists. Win The Guardian over, and you have almost won the BBC."

It is certainly true that the team around David Cameron regularly give exclusive stories to The Guardian group.  David Cameron's questioning of the Tories' opposition to sanctions and the new emphasis on relative poverty were stories first given to The Observer or Guardian, for example.  Mr Glover suggests that George Osborne's possible policy of putting public sector adverts online (the lifeblood revenue source of The Guardian) may have betrayed the Tory leadership's true view of The Guardian but that it does not fit with the wider BBC-friendly strategy.

Related link: CCHQ seeks £140K media strategist (apparently)

Another Labour supporter gets top BBC job

The appointment of Sir Michael Lyons as the Chairman of the new BBC Trust follows the appointment in recent years of Labour supporters Gavyn Davis as BBC Chairman and Greg Dyke as Director General - not to mention his predecessor Lord Birt who went to work for Tony Blair after leaving the BBC. 

Lyons is a former Labour Councillor and serial local government bigwig. More recently he has been commissioned by Gordon Brown to oversee major governmental reviews, getting paid almost half a million pounds to do so.

Tory Culture, Media and Sport spokesman Hugo Swire has responded thus:

"We congratulate Sir Michael on his appointment. However, today we have a situation where important appointments - increasingly dominated by Labour supporters - are made without any form of public scrutiny.  It is deeply regrettable that another announcement should have been sneaked out when Parliament is in recess.  People are entitled to ask on what criteria Sir Michael Lyons – someone with close links to the Labour Party and Gordon Brown in particular – was selected for this role. It is time for major public appointments such as this to be conducted with greater transparency and to receive greater Parliamentary scrutiny - which could be in the form of a Parliamentary confirmation hearing from the relevant committee. But to have a situation where an applicant from a confidential shortlist is announced when Parliament is not sitting is unacceptable."

This Guardian interview from 2004 is worth a look:

"You can ask Sir Michael Lyons pretty much anything, but don't ask the government's favourite son whether he is still a card-carrying member of the Labour party. "I'd rather not answer that question," the former Labour councillor says with a steady gaze. The response is perhaps not surprising. Where government reviews are concerned, Lyons proves to be the bookie's favourite."

Deputy Editor

Britain's broadcasters are abusing our soldiers

On yesterday's BritainAndAmerica blog I identified BBC coverage of external threats as one of ten key vulnerabilities of our country in these early years of the war on terror.  When our nation's dominant (and publicly-funded) broadcaster subjects failings of coalition forces to incessant scrutiny but offers little public education of the threat posed by regimes like Iran, political leaders will struggle to steel the public for the grave challenges that lie ahead.

It's not just in news output that there is a problem.  Drama is at least as undermining and Channel 4 is at least as worrying as the BBC.  On Thursday evening C4 will broadcast The Mark of Cain.  It portrays British soldiers systematically abusing Iraqi citizens in what Max Hastings (a critic of the Iraq war) calls an outrageous exaggeration.

In today's Times, Conservative MP Michael Gove authors a powerful attack on the fictional drama and on the values of the television executives who are broadcasting it:

"The real moral issue that Channel 4 needs to tackle – indeed, that the broadcast media as a whole must consider – is not so much the need for moral courage on the part of our troops. The men and women in the Gulf show the sort of bravery every day of their professional lives that should leave the rest of us speechless with admiration. No, the real issue is the disturbing moral relativism of our media and their lack of moral clarity at a time of trial for freedom. How can it be right that the only drama yet screened about our troops in Iraq, who are risking everything to help to build a democracy, is one in which they are depicted as sadists and cowards? Why do the people who commission this sort of stuff seem to hate our country, and our values, so much that their first impulse is to see what they can do to blacken the reputation of those who fight in our name? And what does it say about the moral courage of our broadcasters that the broader context of the war our soldiers are fighting, the struggle against militant Islamism, just doesn’t get a look-in? It’s time that the whistle was blown on the broadcasters’ abuse of our soldiers’ mission."

Well said, Michael.

Related link: The author of the drama accounts for his work in an article for The Telegraph.